Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Police play rough with tree warriors in Hastings

Tuesday 15 January 2013: A grandmother campaigning against
the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) has been strip searched &
pepper-sprayed by the police during protests against the Road, prompting
activists to express concern over the behaviour of police &
security during the eviction of the protest camps in Combe Haven valley. Police have told
protesters that these evictions will take place this week. Other
women, in their 60s, have been thrown to the ground by security guards,
receiving head injuries.
The peaceful protests against the BHLR – the “first and the worst” of
over 190 road projects that George Osborne, big business and local
councils are pushing across Englandf and Wales – have received
significant national media coverage over the past week.

“Sally” – who has been bailed to appear at Hastings police station
this Friday (18 January) – was arrested by police on the afternoon of
Saturday 15 December 2012 in Sidley, Bexhill. After police demanded her
name and address and she refused, she was arrested, strip-searched,
forcibly finger-printed and then not released until 1.40am the next
morning. The police have no blanket power to demand names and addresses
[5], strongly suggesting that her arrest – which they apparently
justified by claiming, falsely, that she had been involved in
“anti-social behaviour” – was unlawful. [When “Sally” did
return to take part in the protests on 8 January, she was pepper-sprayed
in the face by the police during the removal of a protester who had
climbed up a telegraph pole.Read more

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